December 3, 2016

Greetings fellow gamers! Hope you had a fun and happy Thanksgiving! Besides consuming unhealthy levels of turkey and stuffing, the lads from Toxic Bag were fortunate to attend all three days of the Chicago Tardis Convention. This show, held in Lombard, IL, is one of the largest Doctor Who conventions in the midwest. Here’s a quick recap of the 72 hours of all things Who.

It was really great to get a chance to meet all of these folks from the early days of Doctor Who. All of them had great stories about William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker. Most of them are currently working with Big Finish to produce new Doctor Who audio adventures as well!

Peter Purves and Anneke Wills discuss working with the original Doctor, William Hartnell.

We were able to load up on autographs from all of these lovely folks! I had them sign my vintage Spirit of Light portraits while Joe had a cool picture of all the incarnations of the Tardis. Our friend Jodi presented them with an actual Tardis for signing.

Anneke Wills getting ready to sign my portraits of Doctor’s one and two.

The highlight of the autograph sessions was a moment where Jodi and I made uncomfortable small talk with Wendy Padbury. We had just gotten Wendy’s autograph and both had tickets for Deborah Watling. However, we had to wait for her to finish up. So there we were, staring at Wendy Padbury. After a few seconds of painful silence, Wendy finally said “So…are you from around here?” Since both Jodi and I felt that this wasn’t the time to launch into a complex Doctor Who question, we just responded with “yup, Chicago.” Before Wendy could ask us what our favorite cheese is, or something equally trivial, Deborah finished up and we thankfully moved on. Wendy handled it great, and made the best of a truly strange moment! I can’t believe that I got to make uncomfortable small talk with Wendy Padbury; Zoe of Doctor Who! So I got that going for me, which is nice…

There were several really cool panels. We got to hear some great stories of how 1960’s television was made and the problems these actors and artists had to deal with. Peter Purves, who was on the show for the third season back in 1965, told us that back then, they didn’t have the budget to stop the action and edit. So, they basically had to perform these shows like a stage play. No stopping, if an actor forgot a line, they had to get back on track on their own! It’s almost hard to believe that they did it that way, but that’s the BBC in the 1960’s for you!

The Big Finish guys also had a great panel where they broke down how they produced their audio adventures, and also discussed the future of Big Finish.

April 20, 2015

It’s been over a year since we made Specimen available in print-n-play form. Since then we’ve continued to work and improve it. Right now we’re working on an expansion for Specimen as well as a brand new companion game involving the rescue mission sent from DeLeo-Kaga.

In order to do these things, we needed to find out what happened to our Ship, Crew and Specimen in universe.

Now, we could have just made it up, cause we’re clever about stuff like that. But instead, we decided to play the game and have the results be what happened. So, we decided to run a special Specimen tournament, with the final game being used to determine the history. In honor of the NCAA men and women’s basketball tournament, we’re calling it Specimadness.

First, we got in touch with seven really good Specimen players (cause there are seven crew members in the game – get it?) and asked if they were interested.

Once they were all on board, we put together this nifty bracket and started scheduling the games.

It should be a lot of fun. We’ll be posting AARs of the games, so stay tuned faithful readers!

March 26, 2014

One of the most satisfying parts of designing Specimen was coming up with the different attributes of the monster. Many players have told us that they thought building their monster was one of the most fun parts of playing. Constructing your monster is something that should be done carefully and with some forethought. There are twenty-five attributes to chose from. So what combination will produce a winning Specimen?

Attributes cost 0, 1, 2, or 3 Attribute points. You have to take three attributes, but you can only spend three points. (yes, I know that if Attribute 25 Mutation is chosen, then that’s the only attribute you take – but in every other situation, you take three!) Usually, the more expensive the attribute, the more exotic or powerful it is. But don’t kid yourself; a 1, 1, 1 or 0, 0, 0 Specimen can go through a crew like swiss cheese just as well or better than a 3, 0, 0 Specimen. In fact, all of the Attributes will give your beastie an advantage in one way or another. The secret is recognizing those advantages and using them to their maximum potential.

0 AND 1 POINT ATTRIBUTES (1 thru 9)

Since you normally have to take three Attributes, you will be usually pulling two cards from this group every game. Don’t dismiss them just because they only cost zero or one point. These Attributes can definitely swing the game in your favor. Another advantage to this group is that you can use these Attributes right at the start of the game (chosen Attributes aren’t available until the Specimen life cycle stage is equal to or greater than the Attribute point cost). The first couple of Attributes like #1 Armored Exoskeleton and #4 Razor Sharp Talons give either a +drm to the Specimen combat roll, or a -drm to the Crew combat roll. Attribute #3 Chameleon Ability and #5 Polarized Carbon Cell Structure make the Specimen harder to detect. The next three, #6 Pheromone Emitter, #7 Hypnotic Gaze and #8 Sonic Screech all give the Specimen a special attack or defense, while #9 Goo Emitter allows the Specimen to leave goo in room sections, which can severely hamper Crew movement. All of these can help your beastie, and potentially leave a nasty surprise for the crew.

2 POINT ATTRIBUTES (10 thru 20)

You will only be choosing one Attribute from this group, but they’re all pretty good! Just look at Attribute #10 Spiked Tail. This Attribute gives you an additional combat die – a very powerful Attribute. Many of our playtesters used this one to great advantage. The other eight all give some sort of special ability to the Specimen. You can build a Lair on the ship, (and get a +3drm in Combat there!) or be able to emit an EMP which will disable all of the ship’s electronics. You can be Harder to Kill and take an extra wound before being killed. There are Attributes in this group that will negate one specific crew weapon, or allow your Specimen to move through the airducts or emit toxic blood when wounded. Again, some very powerful abilities that can help you win the game.

3 POINT ATTRIBUTES (21 thru 25)

This last group is what we refer to as the ‘exotic’ Attributes. Attribute #21 Faster Evolution lets you evolve one turn faster than normal. Attribute #22 Life Force Drainer gives you an extra roll in combat to drain the life force from a crew member (resulting in either wounding them or killing them!). #23 Embryo Implanter gives you the ability to create a whole new Specimen. We’ve had games that ended up with two beasties running amok on the ship! #24 Regeneration gives you the ability to heal wounds while #25 Mutation lets you draw a random attribute card in combat and see if it helps you. All of these are pretty powerful! With the exception of #21, which is available at the start of the game, these Attributes will not be available until your beastie reaches life cycle stage three.

Now you just have to build your monster. Here’s where you have to make some decisions on how you’re going to play the game. If you take Armored Exoskeleton (0), Razor Sharp Talons (0), and Spiked Tail (2), you’ve built a lethal killing machine. Your goal should be to shred the crew. Once you’ve reached Level Two and gotten the extra combat die from Spiked Tail, you shouldn’t be afraid to wade into 2 or 3 crew members at a time.

If you choose Thermal Vision (0), Chameleon Ability (0), and Walking EMP (2), your Specimen has been designed to operate in the dark. You would use your EMP to take out the lights and then stalk your prey as they bump around in the dark.

Playing a Specimen with a three point Attribute (Except #21 Faster Evolution) will require some patience on your part. You’ll have to avoid any major combat in the early turns and concentrate on damaging the ship and possibly striking against solitary crew members. Once you reach Stage Three, then you can unleash your exotic Attribute on the unsuspecting crew.

All the Attributes are fun. Some are harder to win with than others, but that’s the cool part. You get to play ‘mad scientist’ and try to build the perfect beast. Happy building!

September 19, 2012

One of the things I really wanted to put into Specimen is the horror flavor. This is the hardest thing to incorporate into a horror game. I mean, really, how scared is a gamer going to be sitting in their well lit home, with their friends, playing a game? Let’s face it, the “I’m scared” factor in a board game is always going to be low, but I still wanted to try.

The Panic Chart in Specimen.

One of the things I came up with is PANIC. It always happens in the classic horror stories that some of the characters just lose it when they confront the monster. To simulate this, I came up with the Panic check. I decided that after three of the seven crew members have been killed, the survivors would start to realize that their odds of making it were not good. From that point on, whenever the monster attacks, each crew member in the combat has to make a Panic check. If they roll their panic number or lower, they pass and can fight as normal. If they blow it, they don’t fight and instead just stand there, frozen. Some crew members are cooler under fire than others. Captain Tyler has the best panic number, while Whitaker (poor Whitaker!) has the worst. Does it give the Specimen an advantage during the later stages of the game? Absolutely! But at that point in the story, the monster should have an advantage.

Oh, and don’t worry, crew players, there are several events you can play to help your guys pass their panic check…

September 6, 2012

“Well, we’re on our way.” – FDR upon learning that American troops had set sail for the invasion of North Africa

So here we are. After months of feverish activity, lots of late nights, and gallons of leaded coffee, our Kickstarter campaign for Specimen is now up and running. I would like to say that I’m relieved, but that just ain’t true. To paraphrase the tag line for Specimen, “When the Kickstarter starts, the terror begins.”

At least I had some semblance of control while we were preparing everything. Now, it’s up to you guys. Oh sure, Joe and I will be furiously tweeting, blogging, and posting on Facebook, basically doing everything we can to get people interested. But really, a board game like Specimen will either appeal to you or it won’t.

So, now begins 30 days of prodding, poking, and cajoling to everyone and anyone I can find to support this project.

Please, take a minute to check out the rewards we have for pledging at different levels. And if you think the project is as cool as we think it is, please consider pledging a few bucks. You can be part of the Specimen Community and help send this great, fun game out into the world!

Every little bit helps, and Joe and I will be very grateful.

Finally, I can’t express enough how proud I am of all the hard work and contributions I’ve gotten from everyone involved with Specimen. You guys listened to the crazy ramblings of wide eyed, obviously mentally impaired or over-medicated bald guy and somehow turned them into a really cool, slick looking game. And for that, I will be eternally grateful, whatever Specimen’s end.

August 28, 2012

This past Saturday I had the pleasure (read ‘sheer terror’) to have my first board game design, “Specimen”, put through a blind playtest. What exactly is a blind playtest, you ask? A blind playtest is where the players play the game using just the rule book. There is no instruction from an experienced player. This type of playtest is actually a critical step on the path to releasing the game. Since I’m not planning on sending myself along with every copy of the game to teach people how to play, making sure that the rules are complete and make sense with minimal confusion is a really good idea. I should point out that I have never written an instruction manual before this, so while everything in it makes sense to me, to others, probably not so much.

Thanks to Eric Van Tassel (“Specimen’s” plucky Science Officer Franklin), we had two very experienced gamers arrive at Stately Cullom Manor at 11:30 AM. After brief introductions and a tour of my fanboy abode, I sat Alex Hunt and Jonathon Hagedorn down at the table with the board, several piles of counters, cards, dice and two copies of the rules and let them have at it. The three of us agreed that I wouldn’t tell them anything and they wouldn’t ask me any questions unless they were completely flummoxed.

Here is where the ‘pleasure’ began in earnest (mostly in my living room, but definitely earnest too). Alex and Jonathon began by reading the rule book cover to cover. Both were armed with post-it notes and pens and very quickly (Like page freaking one!) they began to make notes. It’s quite an experience to watch something you’ve spent basically the last three years of your life working on being picked apart and being powerless to intervene. It’s all for the greater good (the greater good), I kept telling myself. The game will only get better with this. So I sucked it up and went with it. I decided to try and distract myself from the vivisection going on at the table by watching the blu-ray of “The Thing” (the new version, not the Carpenter one.)

By the time the film came to its happy, upbeat conclusion, Jonathon and Alex were well into actually playing the game. Now I got the pleasure of hearing little snippets of their conversation as they confer on game play and rules. “I believe that attempting to damage the ship costs 2 action points, right?” and things like that. Of course, it seems to me that the only bits of the conversation that I can make out clearly are ones that indicate that my rule-writing skills hover somewhere between ‘awful’ and ‘second grader.’ I’m fairly certain that not once did I catch the phrase “This is brilliant. Whoever wrote it is clearly a genius and should be standing in some sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at him” (Why am I the only one who has that dream?).

As this torture rolled on, I became convinced that at any moment the guys were going to announce that the rules are a mess, the game is a failure and my sense of home decor is questionable at best.

Fortunately the whole affair ends quite well. They both enjoyed the game. The rules as I wrote them are serviceable. Jonathon and Alex both put forth a lot of good suggestions for improvement and a few GREAT ones. Several sections can be combined. Several should be expanded. And several new ones should be added.

So, I think that we’ve passed that step. Or at least, didn’t trip and break our freaking necks on it. I’m now in the process of implementing their suggestions, and hope to have a new draft of the rules soon.

August 16, 2012

Total Recall, which I will simply refer to as TR, is a remake of the 1990 Schwarzenegger action flick. This is another attempt to bring Phillip K. Dick‘s classic 1966 short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale to the big screen. Sci-Fi fandom owes a lot to Phillip K. Dick. In addition to this story he also gave us Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which became Blade Runner) and Minority Report. This version is closer to the Dick story (at least this time it’s set entirely on Earth) than the 1990 version, but its still not very close.

TR is set in a standard dystopian sci-fi world. In the near future, the earth has been virtually destroyed by a chemical war. The only habitable places left are The United Federation (England) and the Colony (Australia.) The two places are connected by a gigantic underground train that travels straight through the Earth’s core. I laughed out loud when I read that bit of exposition, since I’m pretty sure that the pressure and temperature at the Earth’s core would be a little bit too extreme for train travel. But it was a movie, so I went with it. There’s a rebellion of sorts going on, with a small group of terrorists blowing up stuff to strike at the heartless United Federation and its evil President Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston).

The story concerns Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell,) a man who lives a fairly mundane life. He works at an android assembly plant in the Colony all day and at night goes home to his wife Lori (Kate Beckinsale)in a shoebox of an apartment. Doug is a troubled guy. He keeps having recurring dreams of escaping from some sort of prison with a hottie resistance fighter named Melina (Jessica Biel.) I must confess that I too have recurring dreams of Jessica Biel, so it’s entirely possible that I might also be some sort of super spy.

Doug feels that his life is missing something, so he visits Rekal Incorporated, a company that offers implanted memories. After perusing the menu, he decides to have a secret agent memory implanted. As the procedure is starting, McClane (John Cho) detects some other planted memories already in Doug’s head. Convinced that he is a Government agent, McClane halts the procedure and wants him thrown out. Suddenly the building is filled with Soldiers. The Rekal staff is gunned down, leaving just Quaid. In a blink of an eye, he kills every soldier in the room and escapes. Returning home he finds that his entire life is actually a fake memory that has been implanted in his head. Even his wife Lori is not what she seems. She is actually another government agent that has been assigned to be his wife. Following her orders, she then tries to kill him and forces him to flee.

The rest of the film shows Quaid on the run desperately trying to discover exactly who he is. Along the way he meets up with the real Melina and finds out that he has a cell phone implanted in his hand. There’s a really cool Hover car chase, lots of gun play and explosions aplenty as the plot begins to unfold. I particularly love bits where Quaid gets a message from his old self. The idea of watching yourself say and act like a complete stranger is compelling and a little bit creepy. The age old question of “am I a good person deep down, or am I rotten” is one we can all relate to. And of course, you have to be prepared for the answer, no matter how ugly it may be. I always go back to a line form Minority Report (another Dick story, as mentioned earlier) when Gideon tells Anderton “Careful Chief, you go digging up the past, all you get is dirty.”

One of the ideas from the original story that I really love is the question of what’s real and what isn’t. Dick had fun playing with the reader on whether Quail (the name of his main character) is really a spy or it’s just the implanted memories. TR tries to explore that concept, but it’s very overhanded and clumsy. I also love the idea of Quaid trying to discover who he really is. That journey of discovery has plenty of ore to mine. Farrell is a good enough actor to handle it, but the script pretty much pushes all of the “Who am I, and am I gonna like me when I find out” stuff aside and concentrates on the large CGI booms.

Overall TR was pretty good. The film makers didn’t really do any cinematic trailblazing. But they cover the old familiar sci-fi ground well. The gem of this film for me is Kate Beckinsale. Most people know her from the awesomely bad Underworld franchise. I think she’s actually a pretty good actor, and she shows it here. She takes a standard villain part and makes it fun. The screen lights up every time she’s on it and she’s physical enough that you believe that she could kill you in multiple ways.

GAME INSPIRATIONS FROM THE MOVIE

Shadow Run seems to be a perfect fit for this setting, although a modern day Call of Cthulhu would work just as well. You could have two character sheets for each character that has had their memories altered. Then you can spring the new sheet with the ‘real’ character at just the right moment. If your players are up for it, they can have a lot of fun playing a different version of themselves. When you add in just the right amount of swat teams, firefights, and huge government conspiracies, you’ve got yourself an enjoyable evening of gaming!

There were a couple of nods to the original Schwartz version. The traveling women at the security check-in “Two Weeks!” makes a fun appearance and Quaid has a quick throw away line “I always wanted to go to Mars” when he is at Rekall. But that one could also be a nod to the actual Dick story as well. All of the crowd shots of the Colony brought to mind the scenes of LA 2019 from Blade Runner.

‘Course, what do I know?

You can check out this review as well as all the others at the Bloodwork blog on toxicbag.com.

July 23, 2012

For the past few months we’ve been working feverishly to enhance the look of our new game, Specimen. Armed with gigabytes of new images from our photo shoot, we’re updating the graphics and design of every aspect of the game. Recently I’ve taken on the challenge of redoing the Attribute cards. Out of all the materials of our prototype, the Attribute cards were in the most dire need of a re-boot. Plain and un-imaginative, these cards were whipped out to be purely functional.

The original prototype version of an Attribute card

Since our specimen is part of Doctor Viktor’s research, it made sense to me that the attributes would be his findings. So I designed a display screen that has all the pertinent game info but also included some other cool window dressing as well.

June 5, 2012

The Specimen project moving on. You guys have been asking a lot of questions about the game and how it works. So, I decided to give you guys more of a feel for what this game is about, Enjoy! – Steve

Toxic Bag: Tell us about the new look for Specimen.

Steve: I have always conceived of the game as a film. I was actually imagining scenes from an imaginary sci-fi film as I was coming up with the game events. So I decided early on that instead of having artwork done for the events and characters, I wanted live actors posed with costumes and props. Once playtesting had progressed to a point that I was happy with the game design, Joe and I hired a costume director, a photographer, and six actors, and started building props. The end result was a nine-hour photo shoot that produced some amazing pictures. Joe and I are now in the process of manipulating the photos and we hope to start releasing them in the next few weeks. I’m very excited about how they’re coming out! Now if I can only find a place to store that flamethrower prop…

The Crew of the TCS Brown searches for the Specimen

Toxic Bag: How long does it generally take to play Specimen?

Steve: It was really important to me to make a game that can be played in one sitting. So far in play testing we’ve found that the game can be played as quickly as two hours, but three and a half hours seems to be the norm.

Toxic Bag: Is this a two-player game only? Can more than two people play?

Steve: I’ve been asked that question a lot during our open play tests. The current version of the game is for two players. I’ve explored optional rules that would make the game for 8 players (one person would control each crew member and the monster.) The biggest obstacles are distributing the cards and the fragile nature of the crew. I haven’t worked out a system that would give every crewmember a card or two to play each turn that I like. Also, crewmembers die very easily, and I’m not sure how excited I would be if my character died 15 minutes into a 3 and half hour game…

Toxic Bag: Could you compare this game to some of the other Card-driven games on the market?

Steve: I would say that Specimen uses a hybrid version of the CDG game systems that are out there. The biggest difference is game scale. Most of the other CDG games that I have seen are historical/strategic games that cover an entire campaign or war involving millions of men and equipment. Specimen focuses on the events taking place on one spaceship. There are seven astronauts and one monster. That’s it.

Since there are no reinforcements, each side has to be very careful not to waste the crew’s lives or Specimen’s wounds. I think that this limitation makes the game more intense in the mid to late stages. The players have to decide whether to play OPS and move or have an event happen. And that decision gets tougher when either the Crew is split up and alone or the Specimen only has one or two wounds left.

Toxic Bag: Please explain the Specimen attributes for us as well as how a player ‘builds’ their monster.

Steve: The current version of the game has 24 attributes to choose from. The Attributes can be broken down into three categories: offensive, defensive and special. Offensive attributes can be anything from a spikey tail (which gives a bonus die in combat) to razor-sharp talons (a +1drm for combat rolls). Defensive attributes help the monster negate the Crew attacks. Things like an armored exoskeleton (a -1drm for Crew combat rolls) to toxic blood (if wounded, there is a chance that the creature’s blood will get on the Crew and potentially kill them! The Special attributes are just that; special. Faster evolution (the monster gets bigger, quicker) and embryo implanter (the monster can reproduce!) are just a couple of examples.

Each attribute also has a point cost associated to it of zero to three points. The Specimen player has three points to spend on attributes and must take three attributes. So, whichever trio of cards they take, the total point cost can’t be more than three.

The rule of thumb is the higher the cost, the better the attribute. However, you can build a very nasty creature with three 0 or 1 point attributes.

Toxic Bag: I see that some of the crewmembers are officers. How does rank affect the game?

Steve: I wanted to make the crew makeup realistic. So it was obvious that there’d be a Captain of the ship. After that, I decided to have a first and second officer. One of my goals was to make this game have a horror flavor to it, and so rank only really enters play later in the game when the monster attacks. As the crew dwindles, the chances increase that the survivors will panic when the monster attacks. Having an officer present helps the rest of the Crew with their panic checks. ‘Course, that means you have to keep the officers alive too. (Laughs)

Toxic Bag: This is a CDG, so how important is hand management?

Steve: Like any CDG, there are certain cards that really should be played as the event. Specimen is no different. Crew events like the flamethrowers and the trackers are really important events and skipping them can be adverse to the Crew’s health. As for the monster, not playing the Air vent movement event really puts the monster in a bad spot. But for the most part, I tried to design the card events as things that you want to have happen, but you could probably win without. That’s where hand management comes in. Holding a card or two, waiting hand after hand to draw that one specific card to work out a sequence is not a winning strategy. You have to play the hand you’re dealt, not the hand you wanted.

Toxic Bag: How do you see the strategy challenge for a player in Specimen?

Steve: Both sides face big challenges in the game. The Crew holds the advantage in the early turns, but they have several choices facing them. Do they hunt down the monster while it’s tiny and weak or do they fix the ship so they don’t explode? Maybe they split up (always a great idea in horror!) and try to do both? The monster has to be careful in the beginning, this is when it is at its weakest. During the middle turns, things even out as the Monster evolves and gets stronger, and the Crew fatalities start to increase. The situation flips during the later turns when the monster has the advantage. But the Crew isn’t totally helpless, as they will be better armed (guns and flamethrowers) and can always abandon the ship.

October 17, 2011

Rating System: 0 – 5 Bubbly Head Deaths with Zero being the lowest and five being the highest.

The Review

The Thing, which I will simply refer to as the Thing, is a prequel to John Carpenters 1982 film of the same title. It’s another re-telling of John Campbell‘s classic 1938 short story Who Goes There? A group of Norwegian scientists in the Antarctic discover an alien spacecraft and its pilot buried in the pre-historic ice. The reason they’re Norwegian this time is because this is the set-up for the Carpenter film. In that one, remember, the American group finds the burned out hulk of the Norwegian base… American paleontologist Kate Loyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is recruited by group leader Dr. Halvorson (Ulrich Thomson) to help extract the thing from the ice. Note to self: if a creepy Norwegian scientist ever asks me to go to Antartica to see ‘something extraordinary’…JUST SAY NO!

Kate accepts and is whisked away to the snow and cold by American chopper pilots Carter (Joel Edgerton) and Jameson (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje – good ole Mr. Echo from Lost) Once there, she is quickly taken to the crash site and finds a darn close copy of the saucer from the Carpenter film and the thing, both buried in the ice. After extracting the creature and returning to base, Dr. Halvorson immediately decides to drill into the ice and get a tissue sample. Later that night, as the base is having a celebration, the thing breaks out of the ice. The group manages to kill it, but not before it kills and swallows Griggs (Paul Braunstein). As the scientists begin to study the remains, Kate discovers that the thing can imitate other living things and that someone in camp is not who they say they are.

The rest of the film has the cat and mouse stalking of human versus thing. I don’t want to say too much more so you can enjoy the ride and keep guessing about who is who. But thanks to the Carpenter film, we know that things are going to end badly for our Norse friends. This time around, the thing is much more of a public thing than the earlier version we see. Actually, it’s a later version, if we’re going chronologically. This thing sprouts oodles of tentacles and teeth at the drop of a hat — any hat. My guess is that the later thing, the one that escapes from this film to the Carpenter film, decides that hiding is a better strategy. Consequently, this film has a lot more action while the Carpenter film has a lot more suspense. And while this generates more excitement, the film makers did sacrifice a lot of the horror potential of the story. So much so, that I would classify this film as a sci-fi action film more along the lines of Predator than a horror film.

The lack of character development also hurts this film. There are fifteen characters in this film! And with the exception of Kate, Carter and Adam (Eric Christian Olsen), they are almost unrecognizable and interchangeable. It would have helped immensely if the costume designer would have given them jerseys with numbers and names on their backs to help us keep them straight. If the film makers were going for more of a suspense and horror atmosphere, this issue would be much, much greater. As I’ve said before, the themes of “Evil is lurking everywhere” and “Nobody is what they seem” are powerful ones. This setup is perfect for them. Every twitch a character makes, every little thing that seems out of character just amps up the paranoia. And let’s face it, everybody has something to hide. Would we really be that surprised if the guy who we’ve always thought was a bit off suddenly sprouted a tentacle out of his head and attacked us? But since the flame throwers start throwing, and characters ‘thing’ out or are killed almost immediately, any chance of building paranoia gives way to action. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this film a bunch! Winstead is game, and she looks good swashing the buckle. The rest of the cast tries hard, but you can only push a cardboard cutout so far.

As a huge fan of the Carpenter film and its real, puppet effects by Rob Bottin and Stan Winston, I was concerned about how this version would look. There are a couple of great sequences of the thing going all CGI-thingy that hold up pretty well. There were certainly a few moments that looked a bit too much like a video game, but there were also a few sequences that Carpenter and Bottin would never even have dreamed of trying back in 1982. I do think that the designers did a great job of capturing the look and sound of the Carpenter film. The Carpenter film, aided by a great Ennio Morricone score, had gobs and gobs of that apocalyptic feeling. The Morricone score is hinted at several times throughout the new film, with the actual Morricone track Humanity (Part 2) – the heart beat piece, running at the end credits. Since the sequence of shots that are interspersed with the credit roll serve to set up the Carpenter film, it’s a good choice. The sound design was exceptional! I especially loved the antarctic ambiance that is present in the background of just about every scene. I know it’s only a howling wind sound, but it’s simple and it works. It suggests a bit of dread and hopelessness that a film like this really needs to succeed.

GAME INSPIRATIONS FROM THE MOVIE

Since some horror buffs, myself included, feel that Campbell’s story was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s 1931 short story At the Mountains of Madness, Call of Cthulhu is the way to go for this. If your game group is up for it, you can easily do a set up where one of the party is already infected. Give everyone a unique hidden objective to achieve so you can keep them guessing at each other’s motivations. Let them bicker and argue while the the thing secretly tries to take them all over. When you add the fact that there is a high chance that the whole party will be killed and the entire base will be set on fire and burned to the ground, we’re talking about an enjoyable evening of gaming!

All of the things at the Norwegian base that we see in the Carpenter film faithfully show up in the prequel. From the fire ax in the door, to the frozen corpse of Collin (Jonathan Walker) still grasping the straight razor he used to slash his wrists and throat, to the two-headed burned thingy that the Americans bring back to their base, there is plenty of fan-friendly continuity here. Also, stay for the end credits to see the Norwegians begin their helicopter chase of the infected dog. Seeing that made me feel a twinge of sorrow for those crazy Swedes…I mean Norweigans.

‘Course, what do I know?

You can check out this review as well as all the others at the Bloodwork blog on toxicbag.com.